Monday, July 19, 2010

Rather than a choice-based talent system, the guild perks have turned into a straight-forward leveling system based on your guilds' advancement (undetermined as to what that means, though achievements are mentioned) and your reputation with the guild (not assigned guild rank). I'm happy with this.

While it does not let guilds specialize as "raiding" vs "leveling/alt" vs "pvp rawr," it gives everyone a bit of something, and the leveling-useful perks are easier for the guild to get while the major big raiding buffs will require more commitment to the guild (as I feel a raider should provide).

As per MMO-Champion (not seeing a blue source yet),

The guild talents are gone and your guild now gets extra bonuses depending on its level. There are 25 levels and each level will automatically reward with more cool stuff. The leveling process remains unchanged and your guild will gain experience through PvP, Dungeon and Raid progression, questing, etc ...

Guild currency has also been removed and rewards will just be "unlocked" after you reach a specific level or complete a guild achievement. Once a reward is unlocked, members will be able to purchase it with gold. Some of the rewards include guild tabards, mounts, heirlooms, and it looks like you will finally be able to have a guild tabard on your mount. (Just like the Argent Tournament banners)

New members of a guild won't be able to buy everything directly, they will have to contribute to the progression of the guild before they can access the top rewards. Each time a player helps towards the leveling he will gain reputation with the guild, the best rewards will require players to be exalted with their guild before they can buy it.

Some tasty tidbits I pulled out for commentary:

Cash Flow: Each time you loot money from an enemy, an extra 5% (later 10%) money is generated and deposited directly into your guild bank.

Guild repairs just got significantly easier for guilds with stingy players. It's not like the player is loosing any of their own hard-earned gold with this, while ensuring the bank's coffers are full of cash that can be used to purchase supplies for flasks (cauldrons?), feasts, mats, etc.

Happy Hour: Increases the number of flasks gained from using a flask cauldron by 100%.

-and-

Chug-A-Lug (Rank 2): The duration of buffs from all guild cauldrons and feasts is increased by 100%.

Consumable buffs for raiding guilds? Awesome.

Applies only to you and not the feast you put down that all the puggers are munching on? Likely.

Working Overtime: Increases the chance to gain a skill increase on tradeskills by 10%.

This one is a bit later in the line, which means it may not be active while we're all leveling to 85. That's my only complaint about it. I'm hoping we'll be able to unlock it while we're leveling so that it will be useful during that time... though I'm going to guess that the "server first" achievements will occur without it. Maybe. We'll have to see.

Have Group, Will Travel: Summons all raid or party members to the caster's current location. Unlimited range, 6 sec cast / Channeled, 2 hr cooldown

Very handy. Can you imagine the implications for bringing lowbies to, say, Dalaran? Mages and Locks, you may've just lost a corner market on summons, but I think it's for the best. Let's just hope your friends aren't so cruel as to drop your level 5 alt into Deathwing's lap :)

If you have a more open bank policy, this will be useful to a lot of guildies; if you've closed it off to a restricted few due to risk of hacks stealing it all, then your guild will see less use out of it, but your officers might enjoy it. Overall, I see this one as being far less interesting or useful than a lot of the other perks... like insta-guild mail.

Mass Resurrection: Brings all dead party and raid members back to life with 35 health and 35 mana. Cannot be cast when in combat. 64% of base mana, Unlimited range, 10 sec cast.

Bwuhhhhh /drool. Okay, so this sounds to me like EVERYONE in the guild that is max-rank (exalted with the guild having unlocked everything?) will get access to mass res. They *might* limit it to only those classes that can res, but I dunno, it's vague and I think it'd be awesome if a rogue could mass-res a whole raid after vanishing during a wipe.

I mean... seriously.

(Edit: AJ burst my bubble by pointing out the mana cost on the spell. I want a rogue mass-res, dangit!)